Young Children Use Conversational Timing as a Cue for Prosocial Commitment

This study explores the emergence of these abilities in young children (104 Chinese children, 41-77 months, 44 female). Children watched cartoon vignettes in which a cartoon character requested help from two friends whose respective responses followed either a short (600 ms) or long (4000 ms) delay.After the main task, participants completed the ITI discrimination task in which a squirrel asked two animals questions (e.g., “What’s your favorite color/food”) and each animal responded with a different ITI (600 ms vs. 4000 ms). Participants indicated which animal answered faster. Next, children completed the MBEMA rhythm test, followed by the false location and false content tasks. After completing the session, each child received an eraser as a gift. On the same day, caregivers were asked to complete the ToMI questionnaire online.This study used RStudio (2025.09.2+418, macOS version) for data processing and analysis, running all statistical procedures within the R language environment. Two datasets were required for the analysis: a long-format dataset and a wide-format dataset. Before running the code, please update the file paths in the first two read.csv() commands according to the actual location of the data files to ensure that R can correctly load the datasets.Variable DescriptionsgroupBetween-subject grouping variable used to balance participants across experimental conditions.classKindergarten class level of each participant: 1 = Junior Class, 2 = Middle Class, 3 = Senior ClassgenderParticipant’s self-reported gender.IDUnique participant identification number.tomiMean score on the Theory of Mind Inventory (ToMI) questionnaire.ageParticipant’s months converted to years.commit_1 – commit_4Scores for each trial (Trial 1–4) in the Commitment Judgment Task (commitment judgment).pre_1 – pre_4Scores for each trial (Trial 1–4) in the Commitment Judgment Task for (Preference).discrimination_1 – discrimination_4Scores for each trial (Trial 1–4) in the ITI Discrimination Task.rhythmTotal score on the MBEMA Rhythm Test.commitment_totalSum of the four trials in the Commitment Judgment Task(commit_1 + commit_2 + commit_3 + commit_4)discrimination_totalSum of the four trials in the ITI Discrimination Task(discrimination_1 + discrimination_2 + discrimination_3 + discrimination_4)locationScore on the False-Belief (Location Change) Task.contentScore on the False-Belief (Unexpected Content) Task.false_beliefTotal false-belief score, calculated as the sum of location + content.preference_totalSum of the four trials in the Preference Task(pre_1 + pre_2 + pre_3 + pre_4)monthParticipant’s age in years.fosterparticipants’ fosters who finished the ToMI: 1=mother, 2=father.